Mr Price is a British writer, journalist and political commentator. He was a BBC journalist from 1981 to 1998, then became special adviser to Prime Minister Tony Blair, eventually assuming the role of Director of Communications for the Labour Party. He coordinated the Labour Party election campaign of 2001and has written three other books.
He had four face to face sessions with Mr Modi;
“Plenty of time,” the author said.
Lance explained how the Modi book came about. “I’d followed the campaign from a distance, seen it on radio and television in Europe, and word was passed onto me that Modi and the people around him thought it might be a good idea to have a book about the campaign, to explain it better to the world outside India that had seen some of it but didn’t really know the detail.
I got a call from one of the people around him. They don’t particularly want to be drawn into it all. The opportunity was there to go and meet him. To see whether he liked me and whether I thought I was going to be given enough freedom to do the book in the way that I wanted to do it.
I said to the Prime Minister, ‘it’s a great honour to be invited to meet you but we do have to be clear that I’m an independent journalist. That’s where my reputation lies and I’m only prepared to do this if I can be free to write this on my terms.’ He was fine about that, he said yes.”
Mr Price interviewed and hired two Indian researchers from a selection he was given and was helped by his subject’s staff.
“Modi’s office was great and if I had questions on anything, they were very quick to respond and dig up stuff. They’re great at storing information; they’d done it through the campaign anyway. They had massive databases so it wasn’t too difficult for them to find the stuff I wanted. But they took the time to do that.”
Mr Price wrote the book in just over six months, including the research, averaging 2,500-3,000 words a day. He and the publishers wanted it in bookstores quickly because it was about the election.
“It’s in my journalistic training; I gave myself a strict number of words to write each day. It was a tight deadline but I work better with deadlines. It’s nice doing a book where you’ve got an editor, Rupert Lancaster at Hodder and Stoughton in the UK, who had a way of looking at the book. But also Thomas Abraham of Hachette India was a great help. He said, ‘Have you seen this, have you seen that, don’t forget, make sure you get this in;’ right up to the last minute. I was constantly trying to keep up with the story as the story keeps changing. That’s the nature of politics.”
From Mr Modi’s office, Dr Hiren Joshi, who was particularly responsible for social media, and his team, supported Lance. “He invited me to his home. I met his wife and his son. You need to spend a bit of time doing that. I also met Union Minister Piyush Goyal and his wife. You learn so much more from these sorts of encounters than you do from formal sit down interviews with politicians- because they’re being politicians.”
He said that British politicians could learn something from the Modi campaign.
“Our politicians can learn how social media creates a genuine open discussion.” Lance said that young people often get their information from social media, and the Modi campaign successfully connected with them this way.
“Modi was giving a big speech at Fergusson College in Pune. His staff crowd- sourced it and asked people on social media what Modi should say. The answer came that he was being far too negative, attacking Congress and the UPA. So he chucked his speech in the bin and started again. That responsiveness and willingness to allow social media to do what it’s good at, is useful.
It’s important to give out an optimistic message. A sense of ambition, of what the country can do and how you can put the country on a different path. That’s sadly lacking in Britain at the moment - from all parties.”
----
I said to Modi, ‘it’s a great honour to be invited to meet you but we do have to be clear that I’m an independent journalist.’
